KTM 125cc Concept Street Bikes. Wow.
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When chatting about bikes with Blair, and his opinion of getting racing bikes for commuting, he sent me these pictures of KTM’s conceptual 125cc street bikes.
First of all, how smart are they!?
The KTM 125 Concept – Option 1 Race
The KTM 125 Concept – Option 2 Street
The KTM Duke R. 690 Single.
Well first off the 125′s are crazy nice. Obviously they don’t have the power of some bigger bikes, but for whizzing around town or indeed the back roads, this bike looks to be immense fun. Having seen the MCN video of the bikes at the show, I can undoubtedly say that the 125′s are amazing. The orange Race version has 2 Akrapovic’s sticky out the back. It’s almost a copy of a bike from the MotoGP games (the Climax made ones, not the new ones, which incidentally aren’t as good…) Amazing.
The Duke R is also very very nice. KTM have a lot of spiel on their website about them all, so check it out in full here.
As a fun bike, they all look like they would fit the bill. But unfortunately I am still not convinced they would be suitable for me.
Maybe the 125′s are so simple and cheap that I can justify getting one. If it gets crapped up, who cares, it’s easy to wash, the engine is on full display and I can get a new one if it falls apart (he says.)
Anyway, pretty damn cool regardless.
Welcome to 2010!
Well welcome one and all, for it’s two-thousand-and-ten A L R E A D Y.
The weather here is atrocious at best, so because of this my bike has been constrained to the work garage, as I couldn’t get it home. Because of this, my bike has sat for a week and now that I have returned to see it, the ignition is seized stopping the key from turning (you can still get the key in though…) and thus I can’t start it, thus I can’t unseize the rear brake that’s now jammed on.
Ace.
It’s going to be a few weeks I would imagine, before this snow and ice clears up. This isn’t good because my bike needs to be in active service asap. I think what I might do is get Stuart to come and get it and do a service. Then I can just wait until the weather is a bit kinder to 2 wheels.
Anyway. I hope Santa was good to y’all and you had a great and happy new year’s celebration. We had a great time, with a new Fraser in the family (Lily, both mother and daughter are well!) and some nice relaxing fatty-eating-chocolate-and-other-leftovers joy.
2010 has to be a good year, because 2009 wasn’t. And for this reason, I have made a promise to update YamYam at least twice a week. Let’s see how I do.
Oh and the 25th of January will celebrate my 3rd year of YamYam and 2 wheeled joy. Insurance AHOY!
Cheerio for now!
Gordon
Thoughts: Rev-It Apache Boot & Dainese Virlunga D-Dry
After my Desmo’s packed in, the Airtech GTXs disappointed and the Sidi Rain Evo’s got sold on eBay (times are tight) I had nothing left but to get the Alpinestars Effex GTX back out of retirement, complete with mud and cobwebs from working in the garden with them on.
The only issue however is now the Effex boots are wasted. There are still two holes in the shift patch and the sole (the reason for the retirement) and the sole is compacted to a wafer, so comfort isn’t really what you would call comfortable. Not only that, they are cold and leak like a pair of boots with two holes in them.
So I got thinking about what was out there now that could possibly fill the void left when my Desmo’s packed in. What kind of boot could be worn day in day out, in Scottish winter weather, as well as walking about in them, washing my bike in them and generally living in them. What boots are there in the market RIGHT NOW, that could possibly fit the bill?
What do you think of these then?
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT!! Wow.
I stumbled across these boots when searching for another boot that I liked the look of. I’ll come to those in a minute.
These Rev-It Apache boots are precisely what I would imagine a boot to look like, should it fit the requested spec I mentioned before. It looks rugged. But it also looks comfortable. It looks solid. Most of all, it looks really quite smart.
These retail for around £160 in the UK. There’s a variety of tech going on in here, including a sole that was derived from hiking boots. WebBikeWorld calls them a “Mashup” in that they merge off-road boots with hiking boots with touring boots and racing boots. It’s a best of all worlds type boot.
I am really intrigued by these. Could they be the answer to my Scottish boot nightmare?
The other boot I mentioned was the Dainese Virunga D-Dry boot. It looks like this:
These boots look like comfy bams I have to say. I also like the combination of soft materials combined with ratchet style closure as an extra security feature.
They don’t look as solid as the Apaches but I prefer the softer look.
I’m going to try and get my hands on either or both of these boots and give them the YamYam review treatment. Fingers crossed because I am really starting to tire of having cold wet feet.
Stay tuned!
Commute=Bums
Hey!
I’ve been commuting through to Glasgow the past couple of days, it’s a real drag. The weather has been getting progressively colder, wetter and darker. I’ve switched to my clear visor permenantly now and it’s a shame, the Summer is officially over…already.
Me and Blair washed out bikes at the weekend, Blair washing his to go in to winter storage, me washing it for the…3rd time this summer. It was MANKY. But the Bro’s got it sorted and it looked smashing. Wheels were gleaming, chain was slick and smooth.
I got up this morning, chucking it down and within 10 minutes my bike was as manky as it was before we washed it…it’s hard work this motorcycle lark.
Not to worry though, because in 2 weeks I am off to sunny Tenerife! Oh AYE!
Had a quick message from Leigh on the Kawasaki ER6 page saying I would be better suited to a scooter. It made me laugh, but maybe he’s right…could this be the end of all my worries!?
Watch out folks, YamYam’s going 2-stroke…
Keep coming back folks, it’s getting to the time of year when YY goes nuts with the post count!
Gordon
Suzuki GSR600s K7 – The Big Review
Hello.
This post would have been done a looong time ago had it not been for my bike breaking so much, so apologies for that.
It has been more than a year now of owning the Suzuki GSR600 and I am about to review it. It won’t be positive in any sense of the word so if you are in a good mood, please navigate to another post on YamYam until you are angry enough.
I guess I’ll start from the start then.
I bought my GSR600s K7 in January of 2008, it was my 4th bike and the last chance of a bike for the next couple of years. I had a Yamaha MT-03 (which melted), a Buell XB12Ss Lightning which costed £2000 for insurance and a Kawasaki ER-6n which was crap and I crashed it and then sold it. The GSR was the bike that I had to get on with as I wasn’t able to afford anything else.
Brand Spanking New.
Blair had one since November 2007 and after having a sit on it and seeing it going etc etc I liked it. I had never had an in-line-4 and had never had access to these kinds of rev’s so was looking forward to it…actually the only thing I haven’t had is a triple.I picked up my bike on the 24th of January 2008 and it felt good. The ER-6n was away and stability was finally here. And it stayed that way for 3 months.
The first thing to go was the electrics. And when I say the electrics I mean the whole thing. The garage replaced the whole wiring loom after a week of diagnostics turning up nothing. It was highly frustrating as we had booked our Scotland Tour for the end of May and I didn’t want anything to stop us from going.
Turns out that they couldn’t find out what the problem was but it was working now and I was happy. If I remember correctly the warranty bill came to something like £600 odd.
Debugging
A couple of months later my bike suddenly failed to start. After many attempts at the house to start it I was off, however on the return trip from work that evening I went to the petrol BP at the Forth Road Bridge and it wouldn’t start for love nor money. After half an hour of attempts it fired up and all was ok for the rest of the week. But then it totally failed to start and it was buggered. After another few days of non-biking bus journey to work the garage had fixed it, with a dirty starter coil or something like that the issue.
My bike then developed a knocking when accelerating in 6th. It wasn’t any other gear, just 6th. As you twisted the throttle I could feel through the pegs a “knock knock knock knock” which sped up as I accelerated. This grew over time in to a knocking at all revs and gears.
My indicators also broke but strangely started flashing really fast. A new indicator relay fixed this. An annoying trait started to appear as well with the mechanic at the garage. He was completely unable to fit my indicator pods back on properly, leaving a huge gaping hole between my tank and the indicator pods. Hair pullingly annoying to say the least.
The knocking became so loud that I had to do something about it. I bought a new Renthal chain/sprocket kit and got it fitted. Turns out my chain was totally feckered and my sprocket had 3-4 teeth missing. Problem solved and the shitty GSR stock drive system was OUT.
Whilst this problem seemed to have been solved, another problem was rearing it’s ugly head. The throttle.
Now I was fully aware of the throttle issues with the GSR and how it lurched forward and back when you accelerated/decelerated, but this was different. The throttle was sticking and I had to force it open and closed if I wanted to get anywhere. This was crap for a few reasons, the first of which was that it’s really unsafe to have to shut the throttle off manually whilst trying to slow down. A number of times I found myself having to brake harder to try and overcome the throttle being slightly open. Also when I am changing gear, the throttle will stick open and rev the bike to 8-9000 revs, which is shit if you are trying to be smooth.
After months of putting up with it I took it to the garage. A week and a half later the bike was fixed. The throttle bodies were siezed, making the butterfly’s stick open. This accounted for the need to force the throttle open and shut and after they were lubed/released the bike was running sweet. This also solved a problem with the bike cutting out in the morning. I would start the bike, let it warm up and then start off to work. I would get to the bottom of the road and change down the gears only for the bike to cut out. I would then have to restart the bike whilst still on the move. I had a suspicion this was to do with the idle speed and I was right.
How my GSR looks now, 2009
The brake switch in my front brake lever broke as well, rendering cars behind me oblivious to my slowing down. The back brake pedal had siezed up due to excessive lack of brake pad so I only had my front. This was replaced under warranty.
January 2009 saw me falling off my bike in the office carpark. This would have been a minor spill had it not been for the engine casings on my bike being corroded. And it was on both sides, and it was leaking oil. The first was fixed under my dollar, but the second corroded engine casing was a warranty job. The spill damage (rear brake lever, engine casing) as well as a 16k service came to £580, which was irritating as the only reasoon I fell off was because the office had left the entrance to the carpark un-gritted. There was not a sausage I could to to stop my front folding from underneath me.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - The new non-corroded engine casing.
The rear left hand pillion footpeg mount then suspiciously cracked. It’s bizarre but the bottom of the casing has a big crack along it. I thought it would be covered under warranty but no it aint. £160 for that to be replaced by me and Em can’t get on it until a week today. What with the excellent spring weather we are having at the minute, this is a major annoyance.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - Rusty. F*cking Rusty.
The finish on my right hand mirror is gone. This is frustrating but will be replaced under warranty with some K8 mirrors, which anyone who rides a GSR can do. There is a deal at the minute whereby anyone who has a GSR can get their mirrors swapped under warranty due to excessive vibration. I never use my mirrors for anything but seeing what’s directly behind me, so I wasn’t bothered. However for those who like to look at themselves or read the car numberplate behind them, this seemed to be a reason to get on to Suzuki. I can think of a few more important issues that they could attend to first though.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - The frame saving R&G Crash Mushroom. Cheers!
And to top off all of this, the throttle issue returned. There seems to be a pattern of things happening twice, but this time it was the throttle shafts not being lubricated enough and now that they are, the problem is fixed.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - Aye...build quality is an issue folks.
The real bone of contention for me is the crazy lack of durability with anything on this bike. It’s like the boy in the garage said, “They give you the bike for free and then rob you for parts” and I have to agree. I am a guy who takes pride in the finish of his bike and to see the paint falling off, rusting, flaking, cracking, badly designed parts on my GSR is a major issue. My rearsets are totally wasted with the paint finish blowing off with the wind to leave a nice fresh bit of metal to rust up.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - Cracked footpeg, conveniently held up with a zip-tie.
I ride my bike 5 days during the week and then when it’s nice, some weekends. I try to wash it every weekend and when I don’t, it’s the 2nd weekend. A bike shouldn’t be this easy to ruin and a bike certainly shouldn’t be so easy to break.
How my GSR looks now, 2009
That’s the negative out the way, and when I say negative I mean in excess of £1500 worth of warranty and non-warranty negativeness.
How my GSR looks now, 2009
So now after I have stated all the problems I have had with the GSR, where does that leave me? Well to be honest I like my GSR. If you ignore all the issues the GSR is a nice bike. The throttle issue can be worked around but now and again still catches you out.
The looks of the GSR are still one of the reasons I love it. It’s quite unique and still get’s a lot of attention, but I suspect it’s people thinking it’s the B-King and not the GSR.
How my GSR looks now, 2009
The power of the GSR still makes me smile with the bike really coming alive after 9k all the way up to the redline at 13.5k. The roll on speed at 70mph is brilliant and leaves nothing to be desired for motorway duties, with low speed stability and controlability superb, so long as you use a good helping of back brake at 3-4mph.
The running costs of the bike are pretty good. I pay circa £224 a month for everything, bike £80, insurance £30, petrol £110 (varies), tax £48 (yearly) so this is a big positive.
The time saved in rush hour alone is enough to justify the expense on parts braking and consumables like tyres and services. I can’t really picture what it would be like commuting to Edinburgh in a car. I would have to leave at day break and get home at sunset and this would drive me mad. With a bike I get up and out to work in 20 minutes and am in the office 40 minutes later. The return is pretty much the same and there is absolutely no waiting in queues at all.
Also as a point in favour of the GSR: It took me and Em around Scotland, laden with luggage, camera gear, sweets and maps unflinchingly easy, and gave us the best time on my GSR, including some sweet handling, power and lack of fuss that we would have wanted. This was a big ask of the GSR and it didn’t even break sweat. Thankfully…
So in summary then, how has the GSR performed over the last year/16,000 miles?
Let us not forget first and foremost that the Suzuki GSR600 is a relatively cheap JAPANESE motorcycle. The finish on the parts is to a budget and it almost certainly, everywhere, shows. With exception to the wheels and handlebar, there is not a part on my bike that isn’t rusted or showing signs of deterioration, whether it be finish flaking off or just turning nasty due to cheapness of material.
There are a number of design touches that are completely stupid and worth slapping the designer over the face for. First is the rearset, which is a cast block of metal. This block holds both sets of pegs and the finish on it is a very nice easy scratch silver paint. If you happen to snap a peg mount point, you have to replace the whole damn thing.
The next is the seat, which is paper thin exactly where your bits naturally sit when you are on the bike. After prolonged periods on the road or if you wear thinner trousers, this can be excruciating very quickly. Not only is the seat thin, but it’s also angled such that your body slides forward in to the tank at the whiff of slowing down. A bit of a flatter angle on the seat would irradicate both problems.
The clutch cable obstructs the temp gauge on the dash. This isn’t so crucial but is annoying.
The clock pod vibrates at exactly 6000rpm and it’s LOUD AND VERY ANNOYING. Something has broken off inside this part and is causing it to vibrate, but I haven’t hit it with anything or tampered with it at all, so there’s obviously an inner stress within this part that fails whenever a mildly big bump is hit.
The throttle issue is something that I knew about and folk who know what a GSR is know about. The fix (looking at the GSR forum) is the throttle position sensor being manually set in the build stage of the bike to a preset place. If you get your bike apart and override this setting by adjusting the position of a lever, the bike runs fine. How Suzuki couldn’t advise their garages to fix this themselves to eradicat this highly irritating and potentially dangerous issue is beyond me.
Ridden 50%, broken 50%
Well, there you go. The GSR is a decent bike let down by STUPID build quality issues and a severe lack of durability to their parts. When I am due for a new bike I wont be looking to Japan for my new metal, I will be looking to either Austria, Germany or Italy…although I am sure I said that if you want a cheap bike you need to look no-where else but Japan….who knows. One things for sure, Suzuki really have something to answer for with the GSR and it seems that when Suzuki released the GSR to the world, the didn’t expect anyone to actually ride it that much. For example Blair’s bike has 4,000 miles on it in a year and a half, and it still looks fresh as a daisy. I’m hitting 17,000 in a year and it looks like a pile of rusty ming. I dont want to even think what it’ll be like this time next year…oh dear.
YY is BACK!
Hello!
YamYam has returned after a while. A very big apology to all, I was moving in to my new house! Two and a half weeks of summer holidays were spent painting, sanding, straining, hurting and stressing. We got the keys Friday and had moved in Tuesday, and that includes decorating the whole place, assembling the 100 pieces of IKEA furniture and becoming a partner in both IKEA and B&Q. We overspent by 300%. That’s not good!
So yeah we had a quick move in and the rest of the holiday was ironing out the creases and getting things how we wanted it. The only downside now though is that my GSR is out of the warm walls of a garage and in to the cold, damp, dark atmosphere.
After 2 weeks then what is new?
Well you will notice the new mileage bar. I decided to steer away from the GSR dash replication to give clearer indication and also save some space. I liked the square one but this one is simpler and better. If you noticed the new bar, you will notice that I have now crested the 10k hill and am currently sitting just over the biggie. It’s weird how quickly it all racks up. 10,000 miles. What’s even more amazing is that after 3 rear tyres, I still have the original front one! It’s really squared and is down to 1.5mm but it’s still going strong! Ha.
Speaking of tyres, my bike went back in after it’s belated 7k service.
The 7k service was £320, and this was due to a new rear being put on. I had mentioned the knocking sound in 6th and the indicators were flashing too fast. I handed my bike in at 11:30am for my 1:15pm time slot and when I returned at 4:30pm, they hadn’t finished some of the jobs like air filter. This was because “it took so long to sort out the indicator problem. Also we couldn’t find a fault with 6th gear.”
Frustrating. So I had to book another time for my bike to come in so they could have a longer test ride and eventually they came back saying that it was possibly the front sprocket. Fair enough. They then added that although a sprocket is around £10, it would probably cost over £130 for a kit and I would probably need the kit…aye ok.
I headed out to my bike to find that YET AGAIN the fecking mechanic had put my indicator pods on wrong. I mean, is he blind? The indicator pods sit in a small dent in the tank which makes the pods sit flush with the tank. When this guy puts them back on, they are either so far off the tank you can see the ground through them or they are all bent under the ignition panel. It’s really annoying and shows how much time they take to give your bike back in the same condition you gave it to them. It also means removing the pods, un-bolting the tank and re-aligning them to fit right, which takes 30-50 minutes and requires ratchets and other bits I don’t have at my house now.
So that’s really annoying and I am getting really fed up with their story telling.
My next service is at 12k, so another 2 months and that means November! OOO.
On another note, after I dropped Em off at work on Sat I went to see the Honda CB1000R. I think it’s my next bike. It is GORGEOUS. It’s really stubby, quite thin, quite tall and looks beefcake. I love it and I love the green colour too. for £7200 it’s a good looking next bike.
Now that my bike is out in the open I fancied an alarm, so I went down to Scott Murray and spoke to my mate Billy. He said fitting an alarm would cost around £80 for say 2 hours labour and I found a DataTool System 2 alarm on fleaBay for £120, so it’s around £200 for an alarm…that’ll have to wait then.
In the meantime I have ordered a bike cover and I have my Motrax Vishas disk lock back from B.
Since the bike has been out in the open I have noticed how much colder it’s getting already. I don’t like it. It’s only bloody September, and we didn’t really have anything resembling summer now did we. I guess I’ll just have to accept that Winter is arriving.
I am quite keen on some handlebar muffs. They may look shit, but I dont care. I also found my wiring loom for my heated gloves, so if I get my muffs and my gloves rockin’, that’ll be ace. It’s really only hands that are a real issue for me in winter and I’ve been through two so I know what to expect.
What else….I bought a “Foggy” anti-fog mask and fitted it the other day…but I’ll post a review about that because it’s suddenly really disappointing…
I got my new Puma Desmo 800 Gore-Tex boots, so I shall also post about that too.
I think that’s me for now. Sorry it’s been a while but once I get the internet in my new house (Virgin is taking ages) it’ll all be back up and running smoothly soon.
Thanks for visiting all!
Gordon
